The Legend of Zelda spans thousands of years. Across a host of games, centered around three core characters — Link, Zelda, and Ganon — a changing cast of characters inhabit, and battle for, a world as expansive as it is elusive. Though this core trio reappears in each iteration, they do so as a reincarnation of themselves — presenting with unique personality traits, behaviors, values, motivations, and shortcomings. Princess Zelda herself, throughout the entire series, remains steadfastly compassionate, empathetic, and self-sacrificing, but game by game matures and shifts in very real and therefore nonlinear ways, vacillating from passionate and curious, though riddled with self-doubt, to tomboyish, headstrong, and independent. Emotionally, she can be stoic or present as open and raw. In her earliest form, she is presented as a damsel in distress, but swiftly steps into her role of matriarchal leader.
Like any good world-building enterprise, The Legend of Zelda is enshrouded by lore. It is arguably half of the experience, feeding the insatiable community that’s developed in and around the game, sparking feverish conversation and a discovery journey that bleeds from screens into the real world. With Zelda, much of this lore surrounds the game’s timeline, the history of the legend itself — something that seasoned players will say beginners shouldn’t be too worried about, assuring that “gradually, you’ll piece it together.” Enjoy each adventure, they say, and the full history will write itself, and often, repeat itself. Time, in this game, as it can be in real life, warps in mysterious ways — leading us back into the past, even as we trudge toward the future. And like in real life, we’ll often realize why, and what it’s all meant to teach us, after the fact.
Read more: “People like listening to me being horribly in pain”: the oral history of Korn
This is not an article about gaming. I actually know very little about gaming and am deeply unqualified to do that. But I’ve been thinking about the space, and Zelda in particular, ever since I spoke with Evanescence’s Amy Lee last week.
Like the virtual princess, Lee, the protagonist of this story, is neither a stranger to reincarnation nor is she to lore. The odyssey of Evanescence began in the mid-’90s, with Lee and co-founder Ben Moody, but it wasn’t long before, by the early aughts, the duo stumbled upon success. Lots of it. As a result, there were labels calling, radio stations running their songs, tours on the table. Simultaneously, Lee grappled with her womanhood as a source of conversation, debate, distress even, and as a group, they faced scrutiny, misplaced labels, and both externally and internally, power struggles arose. Is it commercial enough? How can we modify this to align with the nü-metal zeitgeist? How can we sell her as the “goth queen”? At this time, their idiosyncratic sound — floating between Portishead-inspired alternative electronics, metal, piano-driven classical music, and the cinematic soundtracks of Hans Zimmer — became both a blessing and a point of contention, something that brought a bounty of attention for its uniqueness, and also fed the inherent, greed-infused paranoia that erodes far too many promising artists’ quickly rising careers with its demand for industry standardization.
Following their explosive debut, Fallen, Moody left. Like the parable of the boiling frog, they’d been dropped into the heat fast enough to recognize its danger. Lee adjusted, with the lesson under her belt, and the awareness to avoid the heat altogether — Evanescence’s lineup shifted, and Lee poured the challenges she’d experienced around the album into The Open Door. Reflecting on judgment, pain, objectification, and abusive dynamics — themes that also arose on and around Fallen — the second album, however intense and dark the sonic landscape was, held a flickering light to hope and showed listeners yet another side of Lee that exuded strength, allowing new facets of her character, and independence, to show through. Conscious still not to be the frog in tepid water, whose death comes gradually as the temperature inches up, after touring the album, Lee took a break.
Next came the self-titled album, another demonstration of Lee’s fervor for growth, both personally and musically. Speaking to heartbreak and falling in love, connection seemed to be a key topic lyrically — as well as beyond the lyrics alone. Unlike previous projects, the entire band contributed to this album. In the wake of Evanescence, the band were officially independent, released from their record contract. Their next full-length was the experimental Synthesis, rerecorded takes on the band’s older work, which leaned heavily into live, orchestral instrumentation, as well as electronica. The Bitter Truth took a turn, with Lee circling back to The Open Door-era, heavier sound, for a fusion of fresh and familiar that in 2021 felt like a comforting blanket. That said, though there are nostalgic elements, this album, crafted while Lee took walks in the woods, shows her in a state of triumphant maturation unlike any of her projects before, tackling loss and life from a wider perspective. Vulnerable and cavernous with emotional depth, through experienced eyes, she presents a dialectic world that can hold both pain and joy, happy memories and gutting traumas.
Through it all, Lee has continued to reincarnate. Whether it’s a studio album, EP, solo project, rerelease, or even time off from the industry — with each chapter of her career, another layer of the proverbial onion is peeled away. But this doesn’t mean anything gets whittled down. Over nearly 30 years, she has demonstrated for us, in real time, the process of discovering, uncovering, discarding. Like Princess Zelda, Lee is a quick learner whose life and work have been inextricably tied to the lore and history around it, which is either an asset or a hindrance. It depends where you are in the game. Lee is also a matriarchal figure, in a space dominated by men, and is a being who changes and grows, stumbles and succeeds, but best of all, allows us to see and live through it all alongside her. She’s also had to be stoic at times, in the face of misogyny and a vengeful industry, and at others, she’s had to expose herself with rabid honesty, to create — or to simply survive.
Evanescence’s sixth studio album, Sanctuary, arrives this summer. More so than anything before, it tells a tale of good versus evil. Of fighting for the former, in an attempt to “save the day.” Though unlike Princess Zelda, Lee is addressing a wounded world under threat of collapse that is very real, and all around us. Speaking to her from her home studio in Nashville, she details the process, and pain, that went into the album’s making. Though she exasperates to me, “I hate politics,” Lee explains how she hit a breaking point, witnessing such depravity and abuse in the world, and how it drove her into creation, just as experiencing those traumatic things firsthand, in her personal life, had driven her work early on. But just like she held onto a grain of hope with The Open Door, she’s able to scale that same message for Sanctuary, which relays not only empowerment, but a call to action. In our conversation, we unpack just how much she’s changed — becoming a mother, building Evanescence’s current lineup, working with new producers, speaking truths that only amass in difficulty, and the importance of doing so.
How are you doing?
I’m good. I’ve been running around a million miles an hour since January. I feel like that’s when I was like, “Time to finish this thing.” Then it’s just been complete full speed this whole year.
Yeah, seems like it is going great. This new album, you’ve been working on it for three years?
Yeah, give or take. I like to work slowly and let the music develop, and we’ve obviously been running around and touring and all that. Last year just turned out to be way busier than I expected — I kept thinking, “Cool, 2025, that’s where we’re going to record and finish this thing.” And it just was one good thing after another that’s like, “Well, I can’t say no to that. We’re doing this. We’re going to do these Ballerina songs. We’re going to go on tour in Australia with Metallica. We’re going to do the game awards.” It’s just been a really fun era of yes and collaboration, but it’s definitely been a really busy time because I wasn’t sitting around just recording last year. We were squeezing it in, and we would intermittently be like, “OK, let’s get together for this week, and we’re going to track these five songs.”
Is that new for you — do you usually like to have dedicated time?
No, no. I like to just let songs come from wherever they come from. Music’s going to come to you when you’re not trying to sit there going, “OK, let’s come up with a song.” I feel like that’s the hardest. Sometimes it works. It definitely depends on who you’re with. But for me, music comes out of wanting it, just a desire to create. So, we were giving ourselves the space to have those moments happen. We’d get together and jam in between shows or whatever if we were already all in the same town, and be like, “Great, let’s book an Airbnb and do band camp again.” Did a few of those that were really cool and productive, and sometimes they’re not super productive. It’s just like, “OK, well, we jammed, and I love playing music with you guys. We get to be in a band.” Then other times, it’s just getting in the studio and playing with sounds until something comes out.
I ask this question a lot, but there’s this interview with Trent Reznor when he was making The Downward Spiral, and he talks about how he creates the concept before the album, and then builds the album within that concept.
Amazing.
Do you feel like you work at all like that? Or do you work song by song, until it becomes a collection and then…
I’m a huge fan of his. That’s very interesting to hear. But no, I can’t. I don’t work like that. I’m not that organized. I just have to reach out and open my heart to the universe and let sounds come. I feel like you learn what your new sound is. Every time we make an album, it’s been a few years, and there’s been changes in our life and in our tastes. This time we have Emma [Anzai] as well, so there’s a new band member to contribute her style and sound to all those things. It takes just scratching around and listening back, hearing what comes out of you naturally first for me. Things start to emerge that you want to focus on. Also, I think as time goes by, my heart changes.
I’ve come to a place of perspective where I feel like I can really look at my career and our sound and all of those things. I can hear the last album we did and hear Fallen at the same time, and hear all of it as a big thing. And what’s great about things deep in the past is that there have been moments in my life where I needed to run from them a little bit, but I don’t feel like that anymore. There’s a new perspective where past and present and future are all colliding for me, and it’s made for this album, which I feel like is quintessential. It feels like us new but at our roots at the same time.
How would you describe that thread, the thing that makes something “quintessential” to Evanescence? The thing that’s in everything you do, no matter where the music goes.
It’s hard to explain. There’s lots of bits and pieces to it. But it’s fun when something naturally comes up, and you’re like, “Oh, we can do a little nod to that sound. We can do a nod to that ‘Bring Me to Life’ thing. We can play with horror sound effects and programming, remembering that that was an element from the early days that was really fun.” There is something to the aesthetic of it all that took time to grow and process, just to bring it all together in the same place. So, I don’t know, growing up, I like being older. I like being able to see from the outside, just a little bit of a more zoomed-out view of everything, and then to be able to dive in and go, “I love this. I still love this with my whole heart and love the fact that we get to make music and make people happy and bring some joy into the world.”
I was talking to a few different artists recently about looking back on old albums. It seems like, whether it came out of a traumatic experience or time, or it was hard to look back at for a while, the experience is like having tattoos that you got when you were younger.
Exactly.
Maybe you even regretted them for a while, but ultimately they just become part of the fabric of who you are, where you’ve been.
Like, “You know what? This is part of me. We’ve been through so much together.”
I definitely have tattoos like that. Also in terms of looking back, have you experienced pressure from your past? Because it seems like everything you have done has been wildly successful.
Oh, thanks! I’m sure that’s not totally true — some better than others, for sure. Pressure exists of course, but I feel like it comes more from me than anybody else. So it’s helpful to remind myself that whatever rush that I’m in, I built that myself. We booked the tour. I decided this is what we want. I had off-ramps a couple of times, even up until last month. My manager would be like, “Listen, this is a pace. And if we need to just push the album back to September…” And I was like, “Do not bring that up to me again. I don’t want to hear it. I’m absolutely not going out on tour without the new music already being out. I can’t. That’s the whole point of it. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll skip night sleeping.” And I have, but not because somebody made me and I was under pressure to meet somebody else’s deadline. It’s because I want it. I really, really, really want it. And it’s cool when you want something bad enough, and you just get to go for it and have an incredibly supportive team around you. My band, our production team, the producers and creators on the album and management were all ready to go, like, “I’m with you all the way. We’ll do whatever it takes. Let’s get everybody on board and make this the best thing ever.”
So you’re not going in with a specific concept per se, but what would you say, looking at the album now, is its thesis statement?
That’s a hard question. Again, it’s funny. I don’t plan. I honestly just have to allow it to come. With the lyric writing, I had to process a lot of anger and frustration at the world we live in today and just seeing the wrong things be lifted up and forced upon us and just the lies, the frustration of just being continuously lied to. And it’s good to be somebody that can see through it, which I feel like most of us can, but it’s very frustrating to watch the people that are either less engaged or intentionally misinformed, rooting for the rights to be stripped away. So a lot of rage and anger and frustration and all those things, I had to process that in a way, just pour it into the music.
Some of those moments are as pure and simple as they don’t give a damn about us.
But other moments, many of them, it’s important to inspire, invigorate, and give empowerment and hope. I truly believe that this is all bullshit, and we’re better than this, and we’re stronger than this. We are in a time that is unlike anything I’ve lived through before, where a rising occasion is how you react to the situation we’ve all been forced into. I don’t want this. I hate politics, but it’s not up to us. It’s not our choice. How you rise to the moment, though, that’s what makes us who we are. That’s what makes our existence count. Do something, be a voice of inspiration, light a fire, share hope, and shine light on things that are true, like our humanity. It is there. I’ve seen it all over the world.
It’s not like the whole album’s about that, but having to process these things is definitely a thread, the empowerment and the reality of the struggle. The song that ended up being the last song on the record, “Wide Open Heart,” which was one of the last ones that I finished writing the words to, was a moment for me of breaking through to the other side of a lot of those feelings, and recognizing that a core piece of this fight is preserving our own soul. Just to go through any relationship, as well, heartbreak, abuse, all those things — to be able to be a true survivor means that your whole identity isn’t your survival. It is being strong enough to continue to have an open heart, to continue to have compassion and empathy and honor and belief in the human heart, after being exposed to so much wickedness.
So for me, that moment at the end, I don’t know if it’s the thesis, but it’s the punchline. I hope that it feels that way. There is hope, and I think that’s something that we are in control of, as hard as it can be.
I feel like the album is bookended so well. From the start, that first track, that idea of empowerment is really what came to mind for me. It’s felt. And it’s a really cool journey from there. It carries the emotional arc of everything you’re talking about. Was there a moment in the process of making it — which sounds like it was sped up and slowed down but also happening organically — where you felt like something clicked?
Yes, lots of little moments, but something really clutch, if you will, was when we hooked up with Zakk Cervini and Jordan Fish, and that was a new thing to try. So, we were in the studio and did a few songs with Nick Raskulinecz, who we love, and we did the last two albums with him. I just love him forever. He’s part of this. We started on some of the songs that we’d been developing through what I call “band camp” — we all do a stupid sleepover, and it’s usually in some resort town off season where nobody’s there, like an hour outside of town, wherever we are, and it’s just an empty ghost town with nothing to do but sit in the house and jam on ideas and feel like no one can hear you as loud as you scream.
Anyway, we worked with Nick on some of those songs, and “Afterlife” came to us during that time, which was a gift, just a really cool thing to happen. From Alex Seaver and the guys at Netflix reaching out going, “Hey, let’s do this,” then it snowballing into making a full song, and then it being an Evanescence song was the second part of it. But all that happened, and then Zakk Cervini mixed “Afterlife” — and I’m really involved in every level, down to the mix and the mastering and everything. I care about all that a lot. I was really, really into Zakk Cervini as a mixer. I just remember him getting it right away, which can be really hard.
It’s why I’ve oftentimes defaulted to the producer on the album being the mixer, because nobody else is going to understand what these 275 tracks are supposed to be except for the guy that was there when we did it. It’s just complicated. But Zakk is somebody who just gets it. I already felt a connection. Anyway, Zakk reached out around that time, and he was like, “Hey, I was just wondering if you want to get in the studio and see what happens. Let’s make something from scratch.” And that’s not usually the way I work with a producer. But I was like, “OK, that sounds great. I would love that, actually.” Why not? This has been my season of yes. And he was like, “Cool. I was thinking about bringing in my friend Jordan Fish.” Jordan and I met the year before and had a connection that is kind of intangible. I can’t explain it. We met at Download Festival, where Bring Me the Horizon was doing the headlining set of the main stage — and there was this idea for me to come up and do a collab, which was like two songs matched together. Jordan came to our rehearsals, and we worked together a little bit in the moment, and we had a fun day together. We were hanging out that night, and I just looked at him, and I was like, “We’re supposed to make music together. I just know that. I don’t know why..” And he was like, “I’d love that.” And it’d been a year since that moment, and we hadn’t had that happen yet.
So when Zakk said that, I was like, “Perfect. This is meant to be. I’m going to bring Troy [McLawhorn], my guitar player. How about just the four of us get in there and make that little formation of something and see what happens?” That can be a really high-pressure situation, going in with people you don’t really know. I know that the Fallen/Open Door era of me would not have said yes to that. I’d say no, without even being conscious of my own insecurity, that that’s too terrifying, and writing is so intimate. But this era, 40s me, is like, “That sounds like a blast. What do I have to lose making an ass of myself? I don’t care.” So we went in there, and 45 minutes in, we had the whole verse groove situation of, “Tell me when you had enough.” And by the end of the day, we had that whole song. It was one of those writing processes where everybody was fully contributing, and somebody would come up with a great idea, and I’d be like, “Oh, I know, exactly!” Then, “Oh, I’m going to do this and oh, I’m going to do this.” Just in a circle, where it’s like a synergy loop. It’s all feeding each other, and you can’t stop, and you can’t eat. It’s just all day go, go, go, go. And it was really amazing, lightning in a bottle, “This is a meant-to-be moment.”
Troy and I were in our rental car going back to the hotel, like, “How are we going to do that again tomorrow?” And he was like, “I don’t know.” Then we went in the next day, and it happened again. We went out there for, I think, six days. We walked away with five killer song skeletons that ended up on the album. I think one didn’t make it. So that became this new core, this nucleus of the album. It’s like, “OK, this is where we’re supposed to be. We’re working with these guys on these songs and whatever else we come up with. We’re going to bring the band in.” It was really cool to work with both of them. Jordan and I get each other. But we went to dinner on the fourth night, and Zakk was just talking to me about how he grew up and music, and he told me that Fallen was one of his albums that sort of… It’s weird to say it about somebody else, but it was influential to him in his path. And it clicked for me in a way that was like, “That’s why I like so many things that I hear you do. They don’t sound like it, but there is this deep, native thing that I’m feeling and hearing. I’m part of it in some small, minute way.” We already have been inspiring each other in a loop. Same thing with Jordan. We’re all inspired by each other, and that’s been building for all this time, to come together in this moment where again — it’s past, present, future, all at the same time.
What I’ve always heard from Jordan is that he leans into creating a moment of catharsis in his music, and I feel like that’s definitely something that you have also championed. How can you tell when a song is finished — emotionally and also sonically?
That’s hard to put into words. It’s a combination of a lot of things. You just know. It’s got to be instinctive to a degree, and lyrics are, not always, but pretty much always the last thing — there’s just a few more lines or pieces to fully plug in. When everything else around it has its feeling already and becomes so good, it’s hard for me to ever feel like anything I can say is good enough to sum up what the music is expressing, beyond words, to me. So that is always the last gauntlet. That is my boss fight every time. I always hit a point where I think I can’t do this, and then I always get it done. I’m very proud of all the writing on the record. I felt like lyrics were especially important this time, and I didn’t let a line go by that didn’t really hit me in the chest and go, “Yeah, that’s the line.”
What is your songwriting process like, and how has that changed since the beginning?
I like to allow it to be changing. I like to allow different setups, and I like to get with different band members, producers one-on-one, and just try out different combinations of us because it allows different voices — I mean musical voices — to emerge and have a moment to develop. It’s like spices. We are all unique. Everybody in the band has their own unique tastes and sound and spirit, but we all connect in the middle of it. There is a place where we all intersect, but each one separately is its own thing. I like to play with that. I obviously spent that time with Troy, where it was really like, “Let’s focus on this,” which was really great. I took a week with Emma, just hang out in here and play with ideas, and we did some really good work on “Calm Down.” Obviously, full band is a vibe, and then spending time with Jordan and Zakk, too. I feel very at home creating in the studio, and that’s what I do in here, but having other people to work with at the same time, who are better at the studio part of it than me so that I can really be free to just think creatively is so, so empowering and good.
So, it comes from everywhere. Sometimes just me sitting at the piano by myself, playing with synthesizers, something to get a vibe going more than just a chord progression. It’s either beats or sounds, like either a good groove or some kind of synthy vibe sound, Jordan’s magic. That stuff gets my imagination going the fastest.
What’s something that might surprise fans about this album?
What might surprise them? I don’t know how to answer that. What do you think? Was any of it surprising?
It’s definitely an evolution. That’s what I would say, to start.
Hopefully it always is.
I’m not saying you came out with an acoustic country album, but it’s…
Never.
I think the thing that is so special about your music is, like you talked about, you’ve remained you, but you’ve been growing up — and you can hear that album to album. It’s also always so cinematic and in that way really paints a different picture every time.
I definitely had a lot of moments during the creation process where I said or thought they’re going to love this. So hopefully that’s true.
Were there any visual or, like I said, cinematic references that you had on the top of your mind for this new album?
The Hunger Games. Stranger Things’ The Upside Down. “Who Will You Follow” is very like, there’s this other reality. We’re living in The Truman Show. Ha ha, everything good! Yay, happy! But the crack in the fabric, it’s The Matrix.
This is a more esoteric question, but do you think pain is necessary to create good art or, good is too subjective, to create art at all?
I think pain is necessary for your heart to have the depth to create a piece that can really move somebody. So whether you can make a good… No, I think you can make good art without being in pain, for sure. But I think that life experience adds to your arsenal of emotional weight.
That’s a good answer. Do you feel like when you’re onstage, it’s the same person that’s sitting there right now or there’s…
In between the songs, that is always the most awkward part. I don’t really generally get nervous about the songs, but I do get nervous about the time in between, when I have to say the right thing. It’s got to be off the cuff and real, and my mind is all over the place thinking about the next part or whatever! To just have to be like, “Hey guys, that’s the real me because it’s awkward and human.” I think that’s actually a really good thing, but that is the part where I know that I stumble and get a little more nervous about. It’s just like, “All right, I don’t have this scripted or anything, but how’s everybody doing tonight?” It’s just a weird breaking out of the movie for a second to speak to the crowd. It’s always a little weird.
How much of your identity do you feel like is authored by you versus what’s been imposed on you?
That’s changed. When we were first starting out, it felt imposed on me. And it’s not that my image wasn’t my own. I chose my clothes, everything about the Fallen album, the cover, all of that, whatever pictures were on magazine covers. But it was so big, so fast, that without a lot of information, people naturally just make an assumption based on the way something appears in a two-dimensional image. And human beings aren’t that way — we’re layered and complex and have different moods and emotions and colors. That album cover shoot was on my 21st birthday. So it was a lot all at once, to feel super exposed and misunderstood. I was just like, “That is not the whole picture. I am not ‘goth queen,’ whatever, taking myself too seriously all the time.”
There were a few years there where I would constantly meet people, and they’d be like, “Wow, you’re so nice. I thought you’d be a bitch!” That was always the underlying tone. Like, “Well, why?” That sucks. It was hard to be that cartoon icon thing. I just got to a point where I wanted to really run in the other direction, and if you’re not careful, that can take away your identity in another way — because your whole identity becomes about what you’re not. And I think that’s just a part of growing up — I don’t want to be a product of the things that I’m fighting against that have happened to me, but I also don’t want to be this two-dimensional character of me from when I was 21 years old.
But all that really just takes time. Time, more music, and just more security in my own self and in my own heart. I have had a lot of time to express myself and to have different album covers and different music videos and different messages and different moments with people, and I do feel like I am seen more as my actual self than I did, by a million times, back then. But I think also, I had to go through a time of accepting that that’s not a requirement. People that I don’t actually know don’t have to understand me. And that was hard as a kid. That was hard as a kid, because you’re taught in high school, your identity, what you look like, what people think of you is so important, no matter how much you’re screaming that it isn’t and that you don’t want it to be. It is.
But it feels so good to be on the other side of that. I think that’s something to some degree we all have to go through and get OK with. It’s like, “You know what? You don’t have to like me or know me. I know what’s true. So I’m cool because I say so.”
That is hard. One of the hardest things.
It’s still a struggle. I’m not going to lie.
Like you said, that’s part of being a human. And being a woman, at that. When do you feel you’re the most yourself?
Probably when I’m with my family, when I’m with my son. My son is 11. He’s going to be 12 this year. We have so much fun together, and we are just the same tribe. So being with my parents, being with my son, my sisters, that’s when the people that have known you your whole life.
When you’re making the music, do you think about who you’re making it for, or is it more just for you, an outlet?
I do think about it. I think about our fans. At this point, I know them, and I don’t, but I do as a great spirit. I think about people in general, the human heart, and how it receives art the way that I do, the way that I feel impacted by things, and I think about how I want to give that back. I am making it for myself, and back then would’ve just said I’m only making it for myself, but truthfully, at this point, I do know our audience to some degree, and it’s exciting to know when you’re working on something and feel like, “I love this, but also they’re going to love this.” That’s exciting. It’s like plotting a really big Christmas present party for everybody. It’s like, “Ah, I’ve got your best present this year.”
That’s a good feeling. What’s a question that you wish people would stop asking you? It’s OK if it’s something I said.
I don’t have one. I would’ve had so many to list off to you back then! It’s just funny how things change. You can ask me anything, really. I feel like I’ve had enough of a chance to say my pieces and write my lyrics over the last 23 years that I feel like I’ve gotten to say what I need to say, and if somebody doesn’t get it, that’s OK. What next?
That’s impressive. You definitely are the first to not have an answer.
Just don’t have one on the tip of my tongue. [Laughs.]
“Afterlife” went so crazy when it came out. What do you think connected people with it so intensely and immediately?
I think this is going to sound like a corporate answer. I feel like part of it was the collab. Devil May Cry brought two different worlds together that make sense together — the dark anime universe and gaming culture. That’s me, too. I love that. I think that was on its face smart, and it’s a great song. It was just a really beautiful thing to have to work with in the first place. When Alex brought it in, that whole first verse and chorus was there. And I was right away like, “I would love to. Yeah, let’s do this.”
The chance to build it into something more and turn it into a full song was just the special icing on the cake, and we were so ready for it, too. It was coming at the perfect time because, like I said, we were just starting in the studio working on the new music. And that came in, as this beautiful thing that was already half done. I don’t have a perfect answer. It’s interesting because every song we make, I think there’s something about it that could be the one that gets people the most, and you never really know what that is.
What would be your dream game to be featured on the soundtrack?
Legend of Zelda. And they’re making a movie, so I’m already haunting. I’ve already had a call. I know all the themes. Let me be the ethereal voice somehow. I would love to. That is the game. It’s got personal family meaning as well. My brother and I used to play that game on the Nintendo 64. Then into Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, they’re so beautiful, so ethereally gorgeous. And the music was always such a big, important part of the games. So that’s the one that I would like to have anything to do with.
What does creative freedom mean to you now, versus 20 years ago?
Twenty years ago, I was fighting for it. Every single thing that I wanted, I felt like was a fight, and that made it really exhausting and is the biggest part of the reason that I seriously thought it might be good enough and ready to move on with my life between albums. After all that fighting, it took a long time, but eventually cleaning house and letting things happen to the point that I finally was in a place with a fully supportive management team and label presence and band around me, where we all cared about the music that we were making, and we’re in it not just for ourselves. All those things, it just had to get to a point where I don’t feel like I have to fight for that stuff anymore. I actually feel respected and uplifted by the people around me, and that just makes my heart more open. It makes it easier to trust and easier to listen to everybody’s ideas and not just be like, “I’ve got this. Shut the fuck up.” Because naturally, if everything is a fight, at some point you don’t want to do it anymore. It’s like, “Why am I doing this then?” We’re going to have this whole giant fight so I can make it the way that I want to make it, and you’re not going to think it’s any good.
And you’re going to put the album behind a stack of 20 Fallen albums on the shelf. Why? But freedom, just artistic freedom, is just a beautiful place to be. And I think it’s a team effort. It’s a beautiful thing that it’s a team effort. I want it to be a team effort.
Yeah, I guess the irony of it is, you fight for your independence so that you can connect with other people. So what does success mean to you now? You’ve got a new album coming out, you have a world tour…
Honestly, my priority is that we’re making the best music we’ve ever made. I want to make top quality, no shortcuts, real strings, beautiful, put all the time in, put in years of thought into every word. Being able to listen to it back, and what I hear when I listen back now, that is the ultimate success. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I’ve made plenty of money in my life. We’ve sold plenty of records. It isn’t about that. I want that for us because that’s what keeps it going. That’s what keeps everybody fed and paid. But at the same time, if it were just about that, that wouldn’t be enough for me. So success for me is this album we just made. It is. Everything that comes after that, the big shows, the tour, what songs end up hanging out on the radio for a while, all that stuff is the beautiful icing on the cake that feels like, “Yes, we did it.” We get to celebrate these milestones together, but it all has to come from really keeping the focus on making great art.
Is there a song you’re most excited for people to hear?
Some of them I’m a little nervous about.
Really?
Just because there’s some words. There’s some raw stuff that’s like, “OK, what are you going to think about that?” But I had to. It’s my truth. I’m curious to know what hits people. It’s always interesting, and I have a low tolerance for reading the comments. I’ll scroll for a minute, and then I see what I don’t like. I’m like, “I’m done. I’m out of this app.”
I don’t know how anybody can read comments.
It’s horrible. But it’s funny, though, because you get 50 OMGs and then one where you’re like, “You know what? I hate you all.” But I’m excited for them to hear the whole thing. I really am, start to finish, and across everything — from the order to the way that it flows, I think we nailed it. I think they’re going to think that we nailed it. I hope so.
I think you did, if it means anything.
Thank you.
Photography: Cedrick Jones
Stylist: Marjan Malakpour @ The Only Agency
Assistant Stylist: Chloe Grace Morand
HMU: Elizabeth Mignoga
HMU/Styling: Haven Howell
Story / Editor in Chief: Anna Zanes
Content Editor: Neville Hardman
Lead Designer: Rob Ortenzi
Photo Assistant: Sarah Lindsay
Gaffer: Jason Wain
